Sisterhood
by Pandean
Summary: Arya used to hate her sister's smiles. Now she'd do anything to have Sansa smile again. One-shot. After the War for Dawn.


It occurred to Arya that the last time she saw her sister smile was years ago, back when they were all together at Winterfell. When Rickon, their mother, their father, Robb, almost all of their house was alive and together. She used to hate her sister's smiles. Loathe them, really. They were cocky, smug things that Arya always itched to smack off her face. She'd done so a few times though the punishment had been enough to not do so again.

Arya never thought she'd miss her sister's smiles. But the tugging in her chest proved otherwise.

Arya arrived at Winterfell as Winter began to wither away and die. She'd been busy, busy learning the art of being Faceless, busy getting revenge for her family, busy helping fight in the War for Dawn, and if she was truthful, busy trying to avoid going back to her childhood home for as long as possible. The men around her called her the Warrior Wolf, but they called her sister the Queen in the North. It made Arya's gut churn in a painful way. Of course, Sansa would have had her fairytale ending-just like a song. Through the whole journey to Winterfell, she fueled her anger by imagining her sister, perfect and beautiful, untouched since she last saw her, wearing some ridiculous southern outfit and hairstyle, eating lemoncakes on a throne.

The sight that she arrived to could not be more different.

The woman with her hair in a simple northern braid, dressed in grey and white and furs, whose Tully blue eyes were no longer dreamy and starry but hardened with steel that sat at the head of the hall was not her sister. Or at least, she didn't believe it was. Until a silent tear dripped down the woman's cheek and she whispered Arya's name. She stood, graceful as always, and crossed the room and Arya saw that yes, this was her sister. But something was different.

The first night they shared together they got into a screaming match about who suffered worse. The anger still boiled inside Arya, not even the Faceless Men could drive that out of her. If Sansa hadn't been so _stupid_ and not fallen for Joffrey, the prick, and run to Cersei then _none_ of this would have happened. So what if she got hit a few times. Arya had been roaming the country for years, fought, been stabbed, trained as an assassin, encountered and gave more death than anyone else.

Sansa had said nothing to that, only shaking her head and leaving the room with some sappy sad expression on her face like she couldn't believe they couldn't get along. But they never had. Arya was Arya, tough and made of metal with a muscular body and a scowl and Sansa was Sansa, who sang her songs and wore her silks and whose smile was so stupid it made her rage. Or, at least, it had. Because now her sister's face was frozen. Steely. _Queen in the North. The Ice Wolf._

She found her sister in the Godswood, sitting by the heart tree and speaking softly to it. Arya caught only a few of the words, but it sounded like she was speaking of their brother-cousin, she guessed. She frowned. She knew Jon was a Targaryen, she knew Jon was King in the North before Sansa became Queen, and she knew Jon was dead. But how he died seemed to escape her grasp every time she reached for the answer.

So she quietly sat down beside her sister, who acknowledged her presence with a slight nod and began to rise. "What happened to Jon?" The words left Arya's mouth before she could stop them. "I mean, I know he died. But how?"

Sansa paused. "Petyr Baelish tried to drive Jon and I apart by inciting jealousy between us. When that didn't work, he tried to have him poisoned. We didn't know until after he died that there was poison in his body-Dragonbreath, it was called. It was supposed to make a fever rise so that it burned you from the inside out. But Jon was a Targaryen and the poison only made sure that every White Walker that came near him shattered. When he killed the Night King, though, all the fire was leeched from him. We thought he was dead when they brought him back, but he wasn't, not yet. He pleaded for me to end him before he came back as the new Night King. I'm not sure how he knew it would happen, but when his body began turning to ice, I obliged." She hung her head. "So yes, Arya, that is also my fault."

Arya frowned. She didn't like how her sister said the last bit. She might've been a killer herself but she knew what the gift of mercy was. And she knew Jon well enough to know that to lose himself and become what he most hated would ruin him. "What happened to Baelish?"

Sansa's eyes glittered. "I killed him too. I didn't swing a sword like you," she nodded to Needle on her sister's hip. Even though Arya had outgrown the small sword, she always wore it. "But I had other ways."

"They said you fed Ramsay Bolton to his own hounds." Arya had scoffed when she heard it. _Sansa_ feeding someone to their own hounds? It was preposterous. Or at least, it was until she saw her now almost alien sister in the main hall.

"I did," she replied. "And I watched as they tore into his flesh."

"I didn't know you could do that type of thing."

Sansa's eyes flashed. "There's a lot you 'don't know', Arya. But you were right about one thing: the world isn't full of knights and songs and sweetness and chivalry and lemon cakes. I was a fool to believe that. A Gods be damned fool. I paid for it. I was an idiot. Maybe I deserved it all."

Then Sansa left her alone in the Godswood where it seemed to grow even colder.

Slowly, Arya pieced together the things her sister wouldn't speak of. Her treatment in King's Landing, the abuse, the repeated rapes, the scars on her back she didn't allow even her closest handmaiden to see. She listened as her sister woke up screaming and after a few nights began to warg into Nymeria and climb into the bed with her, if only to see the peaceful look on her face as she rested with her hands in the direwolf's fur.

The ice between them began to melt as the Spring came and Arya accepted Sansa's request of being the head of her Queensguard. They bonded over mocking the men who kept trying to woo the "Ice Queen" or the "Wolf Warrior", playing with the children of Brienne, another member (as Sansa had not forbidden them to have relationships) of the guard, and Tormund, a huge Wildling with a fiery hair and beard who repeatedly made the otherwise fierce Brienne blush and stutter like a maid with his words. She and Sansa cheered her on later, when she beat up her husband in the training yard.

But her sister still never smiled. Gods, she used to hate that smile. Now she would do anything to have it back.

So, she used up all her contacts around Westeros and the Free Cities, searched extensively, and researched as much as she could. She took the haul she got with multiple favors and promises attached and worked tirelessly throughout the nights where no one else would know what she was doing.

And when Sansa came down to break her fast one morning, a plate of lumpy, slightly undercooked, slightly too sweet lemoncakes sat on the table.

Her sister's eyes widened in disbelief as she sat down beside her. "Where did you get the lemons?"

"Oh," Arya shrugged. "Pulled a few strings here, offered a few favors there."

"And you baked them yourself?"

Arya nodded. "I mean, they're not the best. Honestly, they're probably shit if what Gendry said when he tasted them is anywhere near true."

Sansa snorted and reached for a cake and ate it. "They're wonderful." She said, trying to keep a straight face as she swallowed the too sweet, undercooked lemon cake down. Still, she licked her fingers afterward in a show of exaggeration.

"They're shit." Arya said, a smile threatening to shine on her face.

"They are shit." Then Arya was laughing and grinning, at the gross lemon-cakes, at her sister's declaration, but mostly because a smile was threatening to emerge on Sansa's face. Almost like magic, the smile on Sansa's lips bloomed and she laughed too.


End file.
